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Margaret Talbot, writing in the latest New Yorker, has a fascinating piece about evangelical teenagers’ sexual attitudes and practices. It begins by noting that the news of and reaction to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy shocked liberals. They expected evangelical voters to freak out over the news rather than be unfazed by it:
The New Republic and The Washington Post have paid tribute recently to novelist Marilynne Robinson. Both articles — a 4,100-word essay-review in TNR by Ruth Franklin, a senior editor, and a 2,400-word profile by Post reporter Bob Thompson — are informative and well-written. In one major respect, Thompson understands Robinson with greater precision.
I know that I have said this before, but every time that I head out to Southern California, I pick up the Los Angeles Times and I’m reminded of how much news there is in the dead-tree-pulp edition, compared with what I usually see reading the same newspaper online. I always see extra religion stories and religion-haunted stories on paper that I don’t see in the digital world. Why is that?
For some reason, this collection of stories currently running on the Washington Post‘s religion page remind me of that old saw, I believe coined by Tom Lehrer, about how the New York Times would cover the end of the world: “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.”
Early in my reporting career, I spent quite a bit of time chasing televangelists around. That was pretty normal in Charlotte, N.C., and the Pearlygate era rolled on after I had moved on out to Denver.
Do British faith-based programs for prisoners help them walk the straight and narrow while in jail and cut recidivism rates when they get out?
Last week we looked at veteran Time religion writer David Van Biema‘s fun piece “Is It OK to Pray for Your 401(k)? A Theological Primer.” We’ve been calling for good religion coverage, when possible, of the current economic situation. Van Biema followed up that great piece with a really fun and interesting look at how different religions understand appropriate investment.
Based on personal email, I know there are GetReligion readers who want to know what I think of that small — but fascinating — USA Today story about one of the statistical mysteries in Christianity here in the American context. The question is, “What in the world is actually happening in Eastern Orthodoxy?”
A few days ago a reader sent in a really bad BBC article about French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatening to sue a company for selling a “voodoo doll” using his image. The piece was mostly a snarky take-down of Sarkozy and his other attempts at litigation and included this sort of laughable throwaway paragraph at the end:
